Enfilade

From ArtHist.net:

England in Thüringen: Kunst — Sport — Gärten — Architektur

Schlosskapelle Reinhardsbrunn, Friedrichroda, 7–9 May 2026

Die Tagung England in Thüringen: Kunst — Sport — Gärten — Architektur widmet sich den vielfältigen kulturellen Nahtstellen zwischen Großbritannien und Thüringen vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert.

Ihr historisches Fundament liegt in den dynastischen Allianzen des Thüringer Adels mit dem englischen Königshaus: 1736 heiratete Augusta von Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg den englischen Prinzen Friedrich Ludwig von Wales. Ihr Sohn bestieg als Georg III. den britischen Thron.

Adelheid von Sachsen-Meiningen wurde 1818 durch ihre Ehe mit dem späteren König Wilhelm IV. Königin von Großbritannien und Irland. Über Königin Victoria und ihren Ehemann Prinz Albert von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha wirkten diese Verbindungen im 19. Jahrhundert prägend nach. Mit deren Sohn Alfred und dem Enkel Carl Eduard regierten später “Engländer” das Herzogtum Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha. Im Unterschied zu den dynastischen Beziehungen sind die kulturellen Impulse, die mit diesen ein-hergingen, nur wenig erforscht. Umso lohnender erscheint es, diese zum ersten Mal in dieser Form in Thüringen, und zudem mit Schloss Reinhardsbrunn an einem historisch höchst bedeutungsvollen Tagungsort, zu beleuchten.

Die wissenschaftlichen Beiträge decken ein breites thematisches Spektrum ab und zeigen, wie nachhaltig der Kulturtransfer die Region prägte und welche neuen Perspektiven sich dadurch auch für die Zukunft entwickeln lassen.

Anmeldung und Information: angelika.eder@friedenstein-stiftung.de

Veranstalter
Friedenstein Stiftung Gotha, gefördert durch das Thüringer Ministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur sowie den Arbeitskreis selbständiger Kultur-Institute e.V. – ASKI aus Mitteln des Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien

d o n n e r s t a g ,  7  m a i

14.45  Begrüßung
• Tobias Pfeifer-Helke, Stiftungsdirektor der Friedenstein Stiftung

Grußworte
• Christian Tischner, Thüringer Minister für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur
• S.E. Andrew Mitchell, CMG, Britischer Botschafter in Deutschland
• S.H. Prinz Hubertus von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha

15.15  Eröffnungsvortrag
• Benedikt Stuchtey (Marburg) — Eminent Victorians und der Kulturtransfer zwischen Empire und Thüringen

16.15  Kaffeepause

16.30  Sektion 1 | Gärten: Ästhetik und Technik
Moderation: Angelika Eder
• Ute Däberitz (Waltershausen/Berlin) — „Durch wilde Waldparthien gebahnter Weg im englischen Geschmacke“ – Herzog Ernst II. von Sachsen-Gotha Altenburg (1745–1804) und Reinhardsbrunn als südlicher Teil des Englischen Gartens von Gotha.
• Hiram Kümper (Mannheim) — Englische Agrarinnovationen in Thüringen zwischen Skepsis und „Agromanie“, ca. 1750–1830
• Franziska Bartl (Chemnitz) — England in Coburg. Das Beispiel der englischen Musterfarmen Callenberg und Ernstfarm

f r e i t a g ,  8  m a i

9.15  Sektion 2 | Objekte und Begegnungen: Britische Spuren in Thüringen
Moderation: Ute Däberitz
• Kerstin Volker-Saad (Gotha) — Prinzgemahl Albert von Großbritannien und Herzog Ernst II. von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha – die brüderliche Passion für außereuropäische Artefakte
• Steffen Arndt (Gotha) — „And if I was not what I am – this would have been my real home“. Die Besuche Queen Victorias und Prinz Alberts in Coburg und Gotha

10.45  Kaffeepause

11.00  Sektion 3 | Erziehung und Identitätsbildung
Moderation: Elisa Schmidt-Winkler
• Stefan A. Eick (Gotha) — „Der Apfel fällt nicht weit vom Stamm“. Beerbohm-Tree et al. – Britische Schüler an der Salzmannschule Schnepfenthal, 1784–1934
• Angelika Eder (Gotha) — „Try to be a good German”. Der junge Carl Eduard von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha zwischen England und Thüringen.

12.15  Mittagspause

13.30  Erste Möglichkeit einer Führung durch Schloss oder Park Reinhardsbrunn

14.15  Sektion 4 | Sport
Moderation: Claudia Fenske
• Sonja Fielitz (Marburg) — Sport und Mord: Pferdekrimis von Ascot bis Gotha-Boxberg
• Manuel Schwarz (Weißenfels) — “…diese Land wird sein eine sehr gute Tennisplatz for my grandmother.” – Herzog Carl Eduard und der Sport

15.30  Kaffeepause

15.45  Zweite Möglichkeit einer Führung durch Schloss oder Park Reinhardsbrunn

s a m s t a g ,  9  m a i

9.15  Sektion 5 | Greiz und Weimar
Moderation: Timo Trümper
• Ulf Häder (Greiz) — Englischer Hochadel in Ostthüringen. Die Graphik-Sammlung Elizabeths von Großbritannien und Irland (1770–1840) im Greizer Sommerpalais
• Adam Eaker (New York) — “Die höchst interessante Engländerin”: Die Gore-Schwestern und die Weimarer Anglophilie
• Hermann Mildenberger (Weimar) — Carl Ruland (1834–1907). Ein Connaisseur zwischen Windsor und Weimar.

11.15  Kaffeepause

11.45  Sektion 6 | Meiningen
Moderation: Sonja Fielitz
• Daniela Roberts (Würzburg) — Gothic Revival in Thüringen. Jeffry Wyatvilles Entwürfe für Fürst Bernhard II
• Doris Fischer (Rudolstadt) — Die Umgestaltung von Schloss Altenstein durch Herzog Georg II. von Sachsen-Meiningen und Albert Neumeister 1888–90
• Florian Beck M.A. (Meiningen) — Beinahe fünfzig Jahre – Die Shakespeare-Rezeption am Meininger Hoftheater unter Herzog Georg II

Arthur Devis, A Couple, Traditionally Identified as Mr. and Mrs. Hill, detail, 1750–51, oil on canvas
(New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1981.25.226).

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From YCBA:

Thinking through Tea: Art, Resistance, and

Global Entanglements in the Age of American Independence

Online and in-person, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 7–8 May 2026

Marking the 250th anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence, this program reconsiders American resistance not as a singular political rupture, but as a material and visual process shaped through objects, images, and everyday rituals. Rather than treating independence as an abstract ideal, it asks how freedom was experienced, negotiated, resisted, and contested through practices often far from the political stage yet deeply enmeshed in global systems of extraction and exploitation. From drinking tea and sweetening foodstuffs with sugar, to furnishing interiors with tropical woods, wearing imported or locally adapted textiles, or handling silver objects, these material acts encoded both refinement and refusal.

Across multiple sessions held over two days, the program brings objects to the center of inquiry, examining how global goods circulating through colonial households acquired new meanings. Turning to the present moment, the program questions how museums have inherited, framed, and sometimes obscured these histories. The conversations will invite reflection on the ethical responsibilities of collecting institutions as stewards of objects that bear the uneven legacies of revolution, extraction, and empire.

Join the livestream, beginning at 5.30pm ET on Thursday, May 7, and at 10am on Friday, May 8. Registration, available here, is recommended but not required.

The event is made possible through the support and partnership of the Lunder Institute for American Art, the Colby College Museum of Art.

t h u r s d a y ,  7  m a y

5:30  Roundtable 1 | Ritual, Tradition, and Fashion

This roundtable examines how everyday rituals—tea drinking, fashionable dress, and interior furnishing—became charged sites of negotiation in the decades surrounding the American Revolution. Far from being peripheral to political life, these practices were central arenas in which identity, allegiance, and resistance were actively produced and contested. Treating tea and related goods as both commodities and ritual objects, the session explores how colonial communities engaged global materials through practices of adaptation, refusal, and diplomacy. It considers how imported fashions and customs from Africa, the Caribbean, India, and England were reworked into hybrid practices that signaled loyalty, dissent, or strategic ambivalence, and in doing so challenged imperial norms.

Moderator: Mark Peterson, Edmund S. Morgan Professor of History, Yale University

Speakers
• Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Associate Professor of Art and Archaeology and African American Studies, Princeton University
• Catherine E. Kelly, Professor of History and Executive Director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, William & Mary
• Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor, Professor of History and Associate Dean, Graduate Studies, University of California, Davis

f r i d a y ,  8  m a y

10.15  Roundtable 2 | Trade, Movement, and Empire

How did the movement of commodities (and the people who cultivated, transported, taxed, and consumed them) create new traditions, dependencies, and inequalities? Rather than treating American independence as a self-contained national event, this session situates it within global networks of trade, labor, and extraction, in order to think through the networks that both enabled revolutionary protest and reproduced new inequalities.

Moderator: Romita Ray, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Art History, Syracuse University, College of Arts and Sciences

Speakers
• Zara Anishanslin, Associate Professor of History and Art History | Director, Museum Studies & Public Engagement, University of Delaware
• John Stuart Gordon, Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Curator of American Decorative Arts, Yale University Art Gallery
• Jennifer L. Anderson, Associate Professor of History, Stony Brook University

11.30  Break

11.45  Roundtable 3 | The Art of Refusal and Everyday Resistance

What does resistance look like when it happens quietly, domestically, and collectively, through everyday objects, plant commodities, and rituals rather than overt political action? By beginning with domestic refusal—such as tea boycotts and the political meaning of American tea silver—this session reframes revolutionary resistance as embedded in everyday material practice, much of it undertaken by women.

Moderator: Jennifer Van Horn, Professor, Joint Appointment with History, Director of Graduate Studies, Art History, North American Art and Material Culture, University of Delaware

Speakers
• Yota Batsaki, Executive Director and Principal Investigator, Plant Humanities Initiative, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC
• Catherine Molineux, Associate Professor of History, Vanderbilt University

1.00  Lunch Break

2.15  Roundtable 4 | The Afterlives of Curating Resistance

The closing roundtable reflects on institutional and curatorial responsibilities. As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of independence, this session asks how American museums should curate objects of resistance that are inseparable from empire, enslavement, and extraction. What does responsible commemoration look like in material terms? How should we bring out these stories that might not be visible in the archive?

Moderator: Stephanie Sparling Williams, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art

Speakers
• Stéphanie Delamaire, Curator of European and American Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Erica Lome, Curator of Collections, Historic New England

3.45  Closing Reception

From ArtHist.net, with registration available at the University of Bern:

A History of Textile Cleanliness: Washing and Perfuming Fabrics

from the Medieval to the Modern Period

University of Bern / Abegg-Stiftung, Riggisberg, 27–29 May 2026

Organized by Moïra Dato and Érika Wicky

w e d n e s d a y ,  2 7  m a y

University of Bern, Hauptgebaüde, Kuppelraum

13.00  Arrival and coffee

13.30  Introduction by Moïra Dato and Érika Wicky

14.15  Panel 1 | Cultural and Social Attitudes to Cleaning and Textile Care
Moderation: Torsten Korte (Universität Bern)
• Isabella Campagnol (Istituto Marangoni) — Doing the Laundry in 18th-Century Venice: Washing in a City on Water, but without Water
• Marie Charvet (Nantes Université) — Whiteness vs Preservation: Laundresses and Housewives in 19th-Century Urban France Public Washhouses

15.30  Coffee Break

16.00  Panel 2 | The Scent of Cleanliness
Moderation: Érika Wicky
• Océane Fontaine Cioffi (Université de Tours) — The Scent of Clean: Perfuming Linen between Health, Sensuality, and Material Care in 16th-Century Europe
• Pauline Devriese (Universiteit Gent/Modemuseum Hasselt) — The Scent of Dress: Tracing the Separation of Scent and Dress in Daily Hygiene and Health Practices from the 16th to 18th Centuries in Western Europe
• Lucille Lefrang (Université Grenoble Alpes) and Olivier David (Institut Lavoisier/Paris Saclay) — The Contemporary ‘Toxic’ Smell of Clean: The Example of Galaxolide

t h u r s d a y ,  2 8  m a y

Abegg-Stiftung, Riggisberg

10.00  Panel 3 | Techniques and Practices of Textile Cleaning
Moderation: Jean-Alexandre Perras (Sorbonne Université / Cellf)
• Vendy Hoppe (University of Manchester/The Delmas Foundation) — Too Precious to Wash? The Care and Cleaning of Velvets in Early Modern Europe
• Audrey Colonel-Coquet (Université Grenoble-Alpes/LARHRA) — The Cleanliness of Gloves in the 19th Century: From Home Cleaning to Washable Gloves
• Eloïse Richard (Université de Genève) — Behind the White Coat: Cleaning and Sterilizing Hospital Textiles in the Early 20th Century

12.00  Lunch

13.30  Visit of the conservation workshop and storage of the Abegg-Stiftung

14.30  Panel 4 | Cleaning in Textile Conservation
Moderation: Regula Schorta (Abegg-Stiftung)
• Bettina Niekamp (Abegg-Stiftung) — Textile Cleanliness: Some Case Studies of Conservation/Restoration Treatments of Soiled Linen Damasks, Burial Textiles, Tapestries, and Liturgical Textiles
• Johanna Nilsson (Göteborg University), Jan Pettersson (Göteborg University), and Karin Tetteris (Armémuseum) — Traces of Environment and Humans: Interdisciplinary Studies of Dirt on Historical Textiles
• Anna Robinson (University of Lincoln) — In the Usual Fashion: Learning from and Deciphering 19th-Century Laundering Instructions

16.15  Coffee break

16.30  Visit of the permanent and temporary exhibition of the Abegg-Stiftung

f r i d a y ,  2 9  m a y

University of Bern, Hauptgebaüde, Kuppelraum

9,00  Panel 5 | The Actors and Knowledge of Cleaning
Moderation: Raphaël Morera (CNRS/EHESS)
• Olga Arenga (Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata) — From Soap to Scent: Garment Care and Daily Labor in the Barberini Archive
• Sara van Dijk (Rijksmuseum) and Danielle van den Heuvel (Universiteit Utrecht) — White and Bright: Washing Linens in the Dutch Republic
• Santosh Kumar Rai (University of Delhi) — From Flowers to Chemicals: Textile Cleanliness and Changes in the Handloom Industry of Colonial North India
• Monica Klasing Chen (Universität Heidelberg) — Virtue or Science: Washing and Caring for Textiles in Early-Modern and Modern China

11.00  Coffee break

11.30  Panel 6 | Religious Rituals and Practices of Cleanliness
Moderation: Corinne Mühlemann (Universität Bern)
• Juliette Calvarin (Humbold-Universität zu Berlin) — ‘Lynin cloth of witlé coloure’: Veronica’s Veil, Linen Vestments, and the Laundress
• Patricia Blessing (Stanford University) — Textile Cleanliness in Islamic Law: From Hadith to Ottoman Fatwas

12.30  Lunch

14.00  Panel 7 | Dirt and the Absence of Cleaning
Moderation: Sasha Rossman (Universität Bern)
• Sylvia Houghteling (Bryn Mawr College) — The Soil of Dyes: Ground, Water, and Scent in the Making of Early Modern South Asian Textiles
• Léon Rochard (Sorbonne-Université) — ‘The world is like this cloth, misleading and fake’: Clean, Dirty Textiles, and the Question of Representation in the 17th-Century Netherlands
• Alison Matthews David (Toronto Metropolitan University) — Offenders: Cleanliness and the Scent of Crime
• Julia Guarneri (University of Cambridge) — Dry Clean Only: Dealing with Unwashable Clothing in the 20th-Century United States

16.00  Final discussion and closing remarks

Scientific Committee
• Olivier David (Institut Lavoisier / Paris-Saclay)
• Raphaël Morera (CNRS-EHESS)
• Corinne Mühlemann (Universität Bern)
• Helen Wyld (National Museum Scotland)

From ArtHist.net and Eventbrite:

Revolutions, Art, and the Market

Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London, 4–5 June 2026

Art market trends and practices—whether historical or contemporary—are affected by networks of complex and often competing forces. As moments of political, economic, intellectual, or technological rupture, revolutions have significantly shaped art market systems and fortunes, refracting and redirecting collecting ambitions, displacing existing markets and creating new ones, and promoting novel modes of commercialisation of art. Embracing wide chronological and geographical spans, this conference considers how revolutions have inflected the circulation and consumption of art and facilitated the emergence of new art market practices and collecting paradigms.

Tickets range from £10 to £60—depending on whether attendance is online or in-person and whether there is a student rate. Registration is now open here.

t h u r s d a y ,  4  j u n e

9.15  Coffee and Registration

9.45  Welcome

10.00  Session 1 | Revolutions in the Age of Enlightenment
Chair: Barbara Lasic
• Catherine Dossin (Associate Professor, Purdue University) — Franklinmania: The French Art Market and the Making of the American Revolution
• Gabriel Wick (Assistant Professor, American University in Paris) — Marketing Gardens: The Duc d’Orléans, Palais Royal, Le Raincy, and the Parisian Public, 1785–1793
• Jan Dirk Baetens (Assistant Professor, Radboud University) and Evelien De Visser (Curator, RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History) — Art for All: The Emergence of a Mass Market for Cheap Paintings in the Age of Revolutions

12.30  Lunch Break

13.30  Session 2 | The 1917 Russian Revolutions and Their Aftermath</span
Chair: Lis Bogdan
• Natalia Murray (Lecturer, Courtauld Institute) — All the Empty Palaces: The Fate of Private Collections in Russia after the 1917 Revolutions
• Daniel Bulatov (PhD Candidate, University of Münster) — Beyond the Market: Soviet Patronage and the Economics of Western Revolutionary Art, 1920s–30s

14.45  Tea Break

15.15  Session 3 | Modernist Revolutions and Cross-border Networks
Chair: Bernard Vere
• Lara Virginie Pitteloud (PhD Candidate, University of Neuchâtel) — Exhibiting Modernism in Revolutionary Odesa: Izdebsky’s Salons and the Formation of Transnational Art Market Networks, 1909–1911
• Lucia Colombari (Assistant Professor, University of Oklahoma) — The Afterlife of Italian Futurism: Postwar Art Markets and Transatlantic Networks
• Annie Wong (Independent Art Historian) — After the Cultural Revolution: Wu Guanzhong and the Making of a Transregional Chinese Modernist Market

17.15  Keynote
• Adrian Locke (Curator Emeritus, The Royal Academy of Arts) — Frida Kahlo and the Mexican Revolution

18.15  Drinks Reception

f r i d a y ,  5  j u n e

10.00  Session 4 | Revolutions, Representations, and Structural Transformations
Chair: David Bellingham
• Maxence Garde (Curator, Gulbenkian Museum) — Building on a Revolution: A Transformative Economical Approach of Egyptian Antiquities after 1952
• Iris Gilad (University of Tel-Aviv) — Revolution and Recognition: War, Canon Formation, and the Israeli-Palestinian Art Market
• Aurella Yussuf (PhD Candidate, University of Birmingham) — Revolutionary Rhetoric and Market Continuity: Black Political Rupture and the Art Market after 2020

12.30  Lunch Break

13.30  Session 5 | Cultural Revolutions and New Market Practices in Asia
Chair: Ivy Chan
• Vivian Tong (Lecturer, Hong Kong Baptist University) — Shaping Taste in an Evolving Market: Historical Chinese Works of Art and their Auction Market in Hong Kong, 1970s–2020s
• Katie Hill (Senior Lecturer, SIA London) — The Cultural Bond of Maoism: Political Memory and (Cultural) Value in Contemporary Art from China

14.45  Tea Break

15.15  Session 6 | Digital Revolutions
Chair: Melanie Fasche
• Georgia Gerson (PhD Candidate, University of York) — NFTs and the Art Market: Revolution or Continuity?
• Giulia Taurino (Getty Research Institute) — Beyond Network Centrality: Machine Intelligence and the Recovery of Invisible Markets
• Jonathan Adeyemi (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Loughborough University) — Political Revolution and Digital Mediation: A Sustainable Increasing Stake of African Art in the Global Market?

17.15  Concluding Remarks

From Colonial Williamsburg:

Clay Stories: A Ceramics Symposium

Online and in-person, Colonial Williamsburg, 4–6 June 2026

Colonial Williamsburg is pleased to host the 2026 bi-annual ceramics conference, in collaboration with the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA), for this year’s symposium entitled Clay Stories. Every object has multiple stories layered through time as it passes from raw materials in the hands of makers, to finished vessel, to single owner or multiple stewards, and from useful utilitarian piece to archaeological fragment or prized possession mounted in a collector’s curio cabinet or in a museum’s case. Clay Stories weaves together history and research shared by curators, scholars, archaeologists, and potters.

All lecture presentations will be available on the conference streaming platform for both virtual and in-person registrants through 31 August 2026. Virtual attendees have virtual access to all lectures.

t h u r s d a y ,  4  j u n e

12.00  Registration

1.00–6.00  Pre-Conference Bus Tour: Following the Dragon
Generously supported by James D. and Pamela J. Penny

f r i d a y ,  5  j u n e

9.30–3.30  Pre-Conference Workshops and Tours
Please visit the pre-conference options page for more details.

4.30  Welcome

4.45  Glories and the Unexpected: Remarkable Ceramics in American Collections — Errol Manners (Independent Arts Dealer)

5.30  Treasure in Jars of Clay: Discovering Ceramic Masterworks in Unlikely Settings — Luke Zipp (Curator and Author, Crocker Farm)

6.15  Opening Reception

s a t u r d a y ,  6  j u n e

8.30  Announcements and Updates from Colonial Williamsburg and MESDA — Angelika Kuettner (Curator of Ceramics and Glass, Colonial Williamsburg) and Johanna Brown (Chief Curator and Director of Collections, Old Salem)

8.45  Ceramics from England to Jamestown to Williamsburg — Julie Edwards (Archaeological Officer, Cheshire West and Chester Council)

9.30  Coffee Break

10.15  A ‘Magical Mystery Tour’, or the Life and Travels of a Curator —Leslie Grigsby (Emerita Senior Curator of Ceramics and Glass, Winterthur)

10.45  Jack and Acton: Revealing the Contributions and Presence of Enslaved Potters in the 18th-Century Red Earthenware Industry of Charlestown, MA. — Joe Bagley (City Archaeologist and Director of Archaeology, Boston Archaeology Program)

11.15  Bonnin and Morris: New Discoveries in Philadelphia — Melissa and Matt Dumphy (Citizen Archaeologists)

11.45  Philadelphia Slipware in Context — Debbie Miller (Archeologist and Curator, National Park Service)
Lecture Supported by the Chipstone Foundation (Ceramic in America)

12.15  Lunch Break

2.15  From Hubener to Medinger: Redware Potters of Southeastern Pennsylvania — Lisa Minardi (Editor, Americana Insights)

2.45  Midwestern Harvest Jugs: An Expression of Personal Choice — Wes Cowan (Vice Chair Emeritus, Freeman’s Auction House and Founder, Cowan’s Auctions)

3.15  ‘The Prospects of Obtaining Wealth with Ease’: The Ceramic Assemblage of 17th-Century Drayton Hall — Luke Pecoraro (Director of Archaeology and Collections, Drayton Hall Preservation Trust)

3.45  Coffee Break

4.30  RE-coiling and Master Potter David Drake — Michelle Erickson (Independent Artist)
Presentation supported by Jeffrey S. Evans & Associates

5.30  Closing Remarks — Tom Savage (Director of Educational Conferences and Travel, Colonial Williamsburg

6.00  Closing Reception with Live Entertainment at Shields Tavern

Imperial Wine Cups: Gold Cups of Eternal Stability 金甌永固杯, 1740–41 (Qing dynasty, Qianlong period), gold, kingfisher feathers, pearls, sapphires, spinels, tourmalines, carnelian, quartz, chrysoberyl, lapis, turquoise, ivory, mother of pearl and wood; 18 cm high, including stand (London: Wallace Collection, W112 / W113).

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This year’s Haughton International Seminar:

Courtly Magnificence: Gender, Dynasty, and Politics

The British Academy, 11 Carlton House Terrace, London, 24–25 June 2026

Addressing topics ranging from the royal courts of the Middle Ages to those of the 20th century, this seminar will look at how some of the world’s greatest art collections were formed. It will explore how political intrigue and power were involved in their accumulation and how the personalities of these royal collectors—women as much as men—were reflected in their collections.

Two-day seminar: £140
Two-day seminar including a champagne reception and dinner at The Athenaeum on Wednesday, 24th: £230
Student tickets for two-day seminar (on production of ID): £60

p r e s e n t a t i o n s

• Silvia Davoli — Thinking outside the Court: Horace Walpole, Prince of Strawberry Hill
• Lisa Skogh de Zoete — A Family Network of Collectors: Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg, Christina of Sweden, and Hedwig Eleonora of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp
• Mia Jackson — Madame de Pompadour: Love, Friendship, and the Arts
• Rose Kerr — Collections of the Forbidden City
• Tim Knox — China Queens: 20th-Century Royal Collectors of Porcelain
• Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth — Our Ceramic Chasse’: The Exceptional Legacy of Lady Charlotte Schreiber
• Lara Virginie Pitteloud — An Imperial ‘Gluttony’: Art Collecting and the Self-Fashioning of Catherine II’s Court
• Ivan Day and Timothy Schroder — Service a la Francaise
• Christopher (Kit) Maxwell — Staging the Past: The Thorne Miniature Rooms and the Theatre of Historic Interiors
• Timothy Wilson — The Earliest Royal Maiolica Commission: The Service for Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, and His Wife Beatrice of Aragon
• Catriona Seth— Virtuous Circulations? Maria Theresa and Marie Antoinette’s Family Portraits
• Claudia Wagner — Collecting Intaglios: Princes as Scholars

Today and tomorrow at the Villa Medici, from the conference programme:

Diplomatic Gifts in the Modern and Contemporary Periods

L’Académie de France à Rome, 2–3 March 2026

Organized by Alessandro Gallicchio, Valentina Hristova, and Natacha Pernac

Attributed to Bishandas, Jahangir Entertains Shah Abbas, from the St. Petersburg Album, ca. 1618 (Washington DC, Freer Gallery of Art).

On March 2–3, 2026, the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici will host an international symposium dedicated to diplomatic gifts in the modern and contemporary periods, examined in terms of their definitions, transformations, and processes of heritage-making on a global scale. These ‘ambassador objects’ will be studied in their material, political, and symbolic dimensions, as well as in their role in shaping international relations and ritualizing exchanges. Adopting polycentric perspectives, the conference encourages cross-views and bilateral or multilateral analysis of the sources.

Organizing Committee
• Alessandro Gallicchio, Director of the Department of Art History, Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis
• Valentina Hristova, senior lecturer in History of Modern Art, Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens
• Natacha Pernac, senior lecturer in History of Modern Art, Université Paris-Nanterre

Scientific Committee
• Lucien Bély, professor emeritus of modern history, Paris, Sorbonne University, member of the Institut, Académie des sciences morales et politiques
• Francesco Freddolini, Associate professor of modern art history, Rome, Sapienza – University of Rome
• Serge Gruzinski, Director Emeritus of Historical Research, Paris, CNRS / EHESS
• Guido Guerzoni, historian and economist, Milan, Luigi Bocconi University
• Mei Mei Rado, assistant professor of Textile and Dress History, New York, Bard Graduate Center

m o n d a y ,  2  m a r c h

9:00  Accueil

9.30  Ouverture — Sam Stourdzé et Alessandro Gallicchio (Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis)

Introduction — Valentina Hristova (Université de Picardie Jules-Verne, Amiens) et Natacha Pernac (Université Paris-Nanterre)

10.00  Les Définitions en Question
Présidence de session: Valentina Hristova
• Sur les dons (réels ou imaginaires) d’Uzun Hasan à l’État vénitien — Matthew Gillman (Columbia University, NY)
• Une collection des tranchées: Les œuvres découvertes par l’Armée française d’Orient au Louvre. Don diplomatique
ou butin de guerre? — Violette Gautier (Université de Picardie Jules-Verne, Amiens)
• Between Transnational Production and Cultural Diplomacy: Making and Managing Chinese Gardens Overseas — Zeming Taro Cai (University of Toronto)

11.30  Pause café

11.45  Récits Croisés, Sources et Représentations en Regard
Présidence de session: Francesco Freddolini
• Les cadeaux diplomatiques entre Empire ottoman et souverains occidentaux au XVIe siècle. Peut-on parler de réciprocité? — Frédéric Hitzel (EHESS, CETOBaC, Paris)
• The Geography of Diplomatic Gifts: Gift Giving and the Diverse Gift Profiles of State Ambassadors in 18th-Century Ottoman Diplomatic Ceremonial — Hümeyra Şahin Oktay (İstanbul Üniversitesi / Tobb Üniversitesi, Ankara)

12.40  Pause déjeuner

14.15  Les Vies de l’Objet: Fabrication, Reception, Display
Présidence de session: Guido Guerzoni
• « Que lui avions-nous apporté ? » : Les déboires des cadeaux diplomatiques du Portugal au souverain éthiopien Lebna Dengel, 1515–20 — Alain Mathilde (Université de Grenoble Alpes)
• Versailles et le monde: Les présents de Louis XV, 1715–74 — Marie-Laure Buku Pongo (Frick Collection, NY)
• Crafting Diplomacy: Extraordinary Embassies’ Visits to the Gobelins Manufacture and the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne, 1662–1789 — Barbara Lasic (Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Londres)

15.45  Pause café

16.00  Les Vies de l’Objet: Patrimonialisation
Présidence de session: Natacha Pernac
• Représentation et patrimonialisation des visites et dons diplomatiques en un haut lieu militaire, de l’Hôtel des Invalides au musée de l’Armée, 1675–2025 — Sylvie Le Ray-Burimi (Musée de l’Armée, Paris)
• The Qing Empire’s Gift to the Permanent Court of Arbitration: Transforming the Logic of Gift-Giving in Late Qing Diplomacy, 1907–11 — Yuxuan Zhou (Université de Genève)
• Le musée Senghor, une vitrine de la diplomatie culturelle du Sénégal, 1960–80 — Mohamadou M. Dieye (Musée d’art africain Théodore Monod, École doctorale ETHOS, Dakar)

17.30  Pause café

17.45  Special Lecture
• French Diplomatic Gifts in the Shaping of Qing Imperial Arts during the Long 18th Century — Mei Mei Rado (Bard Graduate Center, NY)

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9.00  Accueil

9.30  Stratégies et Politique des Dons Diplomatiques (Temps Long / Sérialité)
Présidence de session: Lucien Bély
• Entre jeux d’échelles et variété des typologies: Les cadeaux diplomatiques des Médicis et des Este au second Cinquecento — André Rocco (Université de Liège)
• Les dons cycliques de « pietra dura » entre l’Inde et l’Italie, 1620–2020: Entre charge historique et enjeux de supériorité — Lola Cindric (EHESS, Paris)
• Giulio Rospigliosi and Pascual de Aragón: The Role of Gifts in Relations between Madrid and Rome and Their American Projection — Carrio Invernizzi Diana (UNED, Madrid)
• Dono Dedimus Sacrum Corpus Christi Martyris, Corpisanti as Diplomatic Gifts from the Holy See to Mexico, 1833–60 — Montserrat A. Báez Hernández (Università di Teramo, KU Leuven)

11:45  Pause café

12:00  Special Lecture
• Du Japon à Madrid via México: Mondialisation, chocs des cultures et dons diplomatiques au sein de la Monarchie catholique, 1580–1640 — Serge Gruzinski (CNRS, EHESS, Paris)

12.45  Pause déjeuner

HECAA events at this year’s CAA conference, with a full listing of panels available here. And please feel free to add additional talks and sessions in the comments section below. –CH

114th Annual Conference of the College Art Association

Hilton Chicago, 18–21 February 2026

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9:00–10:30am | Hilton Chicago—3rd Floor—Marquette Room
Hybridity, Adaptability, and Exchange during the Long Eighteenth Century: Producing Global Aesthetics in Decorative Art and Design (HECAA session)
Chaired by Zifeng Zhao and Alisha Ma
• From Senegal to Parisian Salons: The Shiny Invisibility of Gum Arabic — Carole Nataf (Courtauld Institute)
• Versailles in Beijing: French ‘Cabinet du Roi’ Prints in Late Seventeenth-Century Qing Court and Society — Niko Ruijia Ma (KU Leuven)
• Sugarcoating Colonial Violence: Material Culture and Courtly Displays of Sugar in Ancien Régime France, 1670–1730 — Loïc Derrien (Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum)
• Global Encounters: Imported Chintz in Early Modern Japan — Vidhita Raina (Colorado State University)

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Join HECAA members for lunch on Friday! Catch up with other HECAA members over a buy-your-own lunch at a nearby restaurant. The group will meet at the lobby of the Hilton Chicago between 12:45 and 1:00. Please be in touch with Sarah Lund (hecaa.emergingscholarsrep@gmail.com) so we can know how many people to expect.

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2:30–4:00pm | Hilton Chicago—3rd Floor—Waldorf Room
Bad Government: Art and Politics in the Eighteenth Century (ASECS session)
Chaired by Amy Freund
• Liberty and Death — David Ehrenpreis (James Madison University)
• Risky Business: Female Artists and High-Stakes Print during the French Revolution — Sarah Lund (Harvard University)
• Sketching Fragile Authority: Pierre Eugène du Simitière and Revolutionary Visual Culture — Megan Baker (University of Delaware)
• The Art of Revolutionary Colonialism: Drawing and the Orientalist Guillotine in French-Occupied Egypt — Thadeus Dowad (Northwestern University)

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Note (added 10 February 2026) — There are plenty of other talks and panels worth noting (and please feel free to add them below!), but I especially want to highlight this session sponsored by the Historians of British Art. –CH

Thursday, 19 February, 9:00–10:30am | Hilton Chicago—8th Floor— Lake Erie
Let’s Get Metaphysical: Rethinking the Empiricism of British Art (HBA session)
Chaired by Douglas Fordham
• C. Oliver O’Donnell (University of California, Berkeley) — Contingently Enigmatic Pictures and the Metaphysics of British Empiricism
• Meredith J. Gamer (Columbia University) — Taken from Life: Hunter, Rymsdyck, and the Anatomical Portrait
• Susie Beckham (Yale Center for British Art) — Illusion of Truth: The Im/materiality of Cayley Robinson’s The Close of the Day (1896)
• Clarissa Pereira de Almeida (USP Universidade de São Paulo) — Metaphysical Metaforms: Roy Ascott’s Love–Code–Cloud–Change

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Note (added 15 February 2026) — The original posting included a mistake the HECAA email address, I’m sorry about that, and it’s now been corrected above. –CH